Five key technology trends: What do they mean for public service?

NEW ZEALAND ANSWERS THE CALL FOR DIGITAL TAX SERVICES

Here’s how one revenue agency is tackling digital transformation: from the ground up, with customers at the core.

What does a woodcutter—with a wife, a child and a new baby
on the way—have to do with Inland Revenue’s ambitious vision
for digital tax services? The fictitious woodcutter is one of
numerous customer “personas” New Zealand’s revenue agency
is using as it applies digital technologies to reshape how it
processes tax obligations, determines benefits eligibility and
interacts with taxpayers.

Through examples like the woodcutter, Inland Revenue is
exploring new ways to track taxpayers’ life events. For the
woodcutter, that includes his growing family (which entitles him
to greater tax relief) and his increasing pay (which affects
eligibility for housing subsidies). Historically, taxpayers have
had to manage such changes through a series of disjointed
systems and processes—with many individuals and families
facing steep fines and penalties for unintentional
non-compliance.

Through its sweeping digital transformation, Inland Revenue
aims to change that. The revenue agency is working to build a
new, event-based core system that will reduce the burden of tax
compliance. The platform will put taxpayers at the center of
processes, enabling greater automation and more timely and
coordinated communications. To complement its new core
platform, Inland Revenue is also building a dynamic digital layer
to enable a streamlined customer experience. Single sign-on
and pre-populated personal information will be a welcome
departure from the traditional approach of “Fill out this form, and
we’ll get back to you."

Embracing a ‘digital first’ model

The Accenture Global Taxpayers Survey underscores the need
for customer-centric digital transformation. Nine in ten taxpayers
(91 percent) we surveyed in each country are using online
banking services. They expect similar levels of innovation and
quality of service from their revenue agency—pointing to the
need for digital government services. Yet agencies are
struggling to meet these expectations and continue to engage
with taxpayers through increasingly outdated methods.

In New Zealand, 83 percent of those we surveyed expressed
interest in using an online tax account. Like their taxpaying
peers around the globe, New Zealanders have the appetite,
readiness and trust required to become truly digital customers
of revenue agencies.

Inland Revenue is answering that call. Rather than adding
digital “window dressing” to existing systems or processes, the
revenue agency is doing the hard work of true transformation.
It’s been years in the making—and will take years to complete.
Along the way, Inland Revenue has been engaging with
taxpayers, tax agents, businesses of all sizes and tax software
vendors. The revenue agency is gathering their perspectives,
understanding their pain points and demonstrating a
commitment to using digital technologies to reduce the time and
effort individuals and businesses must expend to address tax
compliance.

It’s an important investment in driving mission productivity and
personalized services—all of which will make life less taxing for
New Zealand’s taxpayers.

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

Learn what the Technology Vision means for public service across Defense & Public Safety, Human Services and Operations & Management industries.

DAN LONDON

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METHODOLOGY

Every year, the Technology Vision team collaborates with Accenture Research to pinpoint the
emerging IT developments that will have the greatest impact on companies, government
agencies, and other organizations in the next three to five years.

The research process this year began with gathering inputs from the Technology Vision External
Advisory Board, a group comprising of more than two dozen executives and entrepreneurs from
the public and private sectors, academia, venture capital and startup companies. In addition, the
Technology Vision team conducted nearly 100 interviews with technology luminaries, industry
experts and Accenture business leaders.

The team also tapped into the vast pool of knowledge and innovative ideas from professionals
across Accenture, using Accenture’s collaboration technologies and a crowdsourcing approach
to launch and run an online contest to uncover the most interesting emerging technology themes.
Over 1,700 participants actively engaged in the contest, contributing valuable ideas and voting
on others’ inputs.

Accenture Technology Vision 2015 Survey Demographics

This year, Accenture conducted the first Technology Vision survey, polling 2,000 business and
technology executives—including 162 public service leaders—across nine countries and 10
industries, in order to understand key technology challenges as well as priority investments. The
goals: to understand their perspectives on key technology challenges they face, and to identify
their priority investments over the next few years. This survey was fielded from December 2014
through January 2015 in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, South Africa, the
United Kingdom and the United States. Respondents included IT Directors (24 percent),
Function Heads (15 percent), CIOs or Chief Mobility Officers (13 percent), CTOs or Directors of
Technology (13 percent), CMOs (9 percent), Line of Business Heads (9 percent) and
CSOs (4 percent).